Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Elon Poll: Folks don't like Congress

Day 2 of last week's multi state (Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia) Elon Poll surveyed the attitudes of southern voters toward the President and Congress. Not surprisingly respondents disapproved of President Bush by a 57-34 margin. The unpopularity of President Bush is not exactly breaking news.

Although 44% of respondents thought that Congress would do a better job on the main issues the nation faces compared to 32% for President Bush, not many folks surveyed think much of Congress either.

Over half the respondents said that their confidence in Congress has decreased lately and only 4.1% of folks said they had a lot of confidence in Congress.

Do these results mean we're going to see a lot of turnover of Congressional seats from the southern states next year? Don't count on it. I think this is a classic case of the old adage that people 'hate Congress but love their Congressman.' For the most part voters always say they think Congress is doing a bad job but they generally like their actual representative.

It would have been interesting for Elon to ask a question about whether respondents approved of their Congressman's performance. I bet that number would be pretty high.

If more than one or two Congressional seats in this five state area flip next year I would be surprised.